


A Plague of Questions

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Death, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Grief, Guilt, Hints of Grooming Behavior, Manipulation, Psychological Manipulation, Sweating Sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 16:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16411760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Alex and Duke Roger help one another make sense of the Sweating Sickness.





	A Plague of Questions

A Plague of Questions

When the burning, guilty questions about the Sweating Sickness—why it had killed Francis and so many many thousands of others in the palace and Corus, but, seemingly on a whim, had spared Alex—reared in his head, Alex sought answers in the library. Normally he wouldn’t be reduced to such desperate measures, because he could share any problem with Gary, who would eagerly puzzle it out on the next rainy day since thinking was Gary’s favorite leisure activity. 

However, whenever Alex tried to bring up the Sweating Sickness to his best friend, Gary would shoot him a repressive glare eerily reminiscent of his father’s and inform Alex tartly that they had been fortunate to survive the Sweating Sickness once and shouldn’t tempt fate by reliving it. 

Gary wanted to forget, but Alex couldn’t forget how he, Gary, or Raoul could have died. He couldn’t forget how Jon, Queen Lianne, and Duke Gareth had hovered on the cusp of death. Most of all, he couldn’t forget Francis, whom he had trained, studied, eaten, and laughed with for years. He had to understand the incomprehensible—why someone as young and innocent as Francis had died before his life could truly begin—and that meant doing grim research on the nature of the Sweating Sickness itself. 

Curling into a corner where he hoped nobody would be able to detect the dark topic into which he was delving, Alex read a tome published in Carthak on the Sweating Sickness. To his surprise, the book contained a lengthy article by none other than Duke Roger of Conte, the great mage who was nephew to the king. 

Duke Roger had apparently earned acclaim in Carthak for his work combatting the Sweating Sickness outbreaks in the twin Carthaki cities of Amar and Apal. In this piece commissioned by the Carthaki emperor, Duke Roger compared in detail the quarantine models implemented in the two cities, ultimately extolling the merits of Amar’s sixty day quarantine method over Apal’s thirty day one…No quarantine had been imposed in Corus, Alex remembered. The Sweating Sickness had brought too much chaos for that. There had barely been enough order retained to bury the dead in mass, nameless graves…

“Young Alexander of Tirragen.” A silky—almost ghostly—voice whispering his name let Alex know that his hiding place wasn’t so secret after all. 

Glancing up from his book, Alex spotted Duke Roger, resplendent in robes of jade. Starting to rise and hating the guilty flush that flamed his cheeks—since his research wasn’t forbidden even if it was morbid as death—Alex almost stumbled over his apology. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I didn’t see you.” 

“Please don’t stand on my behalf.” Duke Roger gestured for Alex to remain seated. Sliding beside Alex, he added as if they were equals, “It is I who must beg your forgiveness for disturbing your research. What do you read?” 

“A book on the Sweating Sickness, sir.” Alex tilted the spine so the duke could read the title. “It has an article from you in it. I wasn’t aware that Your Grace was an expert on the Sweating Sickness.” 

“In Carthak, I was involved with healing some victims and wrote about my experiences.” Duke Roger stared out a window into the slate gray clouds, and Alex wondered if he was reciting a litany of the dead and almost dead as Alex was. The estimate of the dead in Corus—half the city’s population—was staggering, but even more unnerving to contemplate was how Jon and Queen Lianne had almost died, leaving the kingdom without a queen and heir. 

The duke, of course, wouldn’t know about Francis’s death, or about how close Alex, Gary, and Raoul had come to crossing the thin veil that separated the living from the dead. Alex still remembered little of his sickness except that his sweltering body had felt stone cold, and, in his feverish hallucinations, he had imagined the Black God calling his name in an impossible to ignore summons. 

Forcing himself to focus on Duke Roger, Alex saw the duke shake his head almost imperceptibly as if to rid himself of a horrible notion. “I sailed to Corus by the fastest ship as soon as I received reports of what was occurring here, but Carthak is so far that by the time I arrived, the Sweating Sickness was gone, leaving so much death and devastation in its wake. You can imagine the terrible guilt I feel, thinking that I might have been able to save even one life if I’d come sooner…” 

“It’s not your fault, Your Grace.” Alex, who rarely felt moved to provide reassurance, couldn’t resist the compulsion to offer Duke Roger, whom he had some unexplainable connection with, what feeble comfort he could. “Duke Baird is a powerful healer, and he couldn’t save everyone even though he was here. I even heard that the Sweating Sickness drained him of his magic as no other illness or injury ever had.” 

“I heard the same.” Duke Roger emitted a sigh mournful as wind rippling over the grass blanketing a tomb. “No doubt it’s a dreadful hubris on my part to believe that I would’ve been able to help where Duke Baird couldn’t. He is, as you say, a powerful healer, and his magic was sapped by the Sweating Sickness in a most mysterious manner.” 

Alex was saved the struggle of mustering a reply to such a confidence from this illustrious court figure when Duke Roger’s eyes, an even darker, more paralyzing blue than Jon’s, locked on Alex, who fought the urge to shuffle awkwardly under the duke’s intense scrutiny. “You’ve been a comfort to me, young Alexander. I’ll never forget that—or you.”


End file.
